Google has now become a part of just about everything we do online; starting from searching the web, using a Gmail account to searching for a location on Google Maps. It’s like a one-stop shop for all our activities online. But there is a downside; problems can arise if our Google account ends up being compromised, in which case there is a distinct possibility of our sensitive confidential data like emails being accessed and deleted! Periodic backup of your precious emails and other Google data is possible; how you can do that is explained below:

Step 1 — Access your Google Account settings at this URL: https://myaccount.google.com in order to retrieve your data and download it.

Step 2 — Once you have logged into your account settings page, scroll down to account settings---->Download Data--->Click Account Data to download option as marked by the arrow below.

Step 3 — The next window will display the data that you want to download, for example Mail or your Blogger data. You will notice a “Select none/all” button; when you click the ‘select none’ option everything gets deselected giving you the ability to custom choose the data you want to download on an individual basis.

Step 4 — Scroll further down the page above and select ‘Mail’, only for the purpose of this article, and click next as shown by the arrow below. You have the flexibility to download data for Blogger, Hangouts, Bookmarks, YouTube or your entire archive by choosing the ‘Select All’ option as explained above:

Step 5 — After clicking ‘Next’ in the step above you will be greeted with this screenshot:

Step 6 — Once you click on ‘Create archive’ the process will start and depending on the amount of emails in your Gmail inbox it can take from a few hours to a couple of days for the whole process to complete and in receiving the email.

Step 7 — To open the MBOX format of file of your emails in either Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird follow the instructions in this URL: https://backupify.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203099108-How-to-view-Gmail-Exports-locally-on-your-computer, or use Windows MBOX viewer which can be downloaded from this URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mbox-viewer/

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 24th, 2015

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